InvitationBox Review

Pros / The Wording Assistant can help you craft the message you want to share.

Cons / Foil and embossing are missing from this site's photo card offerings.

Verdict / While the final product is quite nice with InvitationBox, competing services are easier to use.

Editor's Note: This review has been removed from our side-by-side comparison because it no longer ranks as a top 10 product. The original review is below, but check out our current top 10 about Photo Cards here.

InvitationBox is designed to take away the stress of selecting, personalizing and sending birthday invitations, Christmas cards, baby shower invitations and other messages by mail. This photo cards service offers many beautiful designs, along with a few ordering options. It provides many of the features we love to see in custom photo card services, but when we created our own photo cards, we found InvitationBox a little more difficult to use than many similar photo card printing services we tested. Also, since this company emphasizes invitations, it can be hard to find the photo cards in order to personalize and buy one.

InvitationBox's most outstanding feature is the Wording Assistant tool. If you are not much of a wordsmith, this feature suggests what to say. All you have to do is input the specifics of your event and the Wording Assistant offers you some verses that may fit well in your card. This is especially useful when you have to send out large batches of cards and you may not have time to write personalized notes to friends and family.

This service gives you some room to personalize your photo cards, but only in a minimal way. Backgrounds on some of the photo cards can change, but not many. The photos you upload to the card are fixed in place, making it hard to zoom or crop the image. The text is the most customizable feature on your photo card. The type is moveable, and you can adjust its size, font color and alignment. The photo card editor could use some extra features, but the site does have some interesting reference points to look at while you edit your batch. Above the editor, you can find etiquette and grammar advice when making cards for special occasions like weddings.

InvitationBox offers a few relatively rare features when compared to others in our photo cards review, such as the option to order your envelopes in advance. This feature is a great advantage if you place a large order and want to address the envelopes so that you can mail your cards as quickly as possible after your order arrives. All of your orders include envelopes, so you don't have to worry about any extra costs sneaking up on you. Most of the cards featured on the website also include a large-quantity discount, meaning that when you buy more cards, the price per card goes down.

However, we were disappointed to see that this service lacks a few features. For example, you can't save addresses or photos on your online account. InvitationBox offers proofs only after purchase, but your cards won't go to print until you've approved what they've sent you.

InvitationBox does have an extensive inventory, which is great, but with personalized photo cards specifically, the selection is much more limited. There is a strong selection of holiday photo cards, along with birth announcements and graduation cards. However, we couldn’t find any blank card templates, and the selection is limited for many of the less popular photo card options, such as response cards and new address announcements.

When it comes to customer support, this picture card service offers several options for contacting a company representative. Email, telephone and live chat support are all available. However, we tried to contact InvitationBox using live chat several times and never received a response.

Summary

InvitationBox lacks a few of the key features we value in the best photo card sites. Customization is limited to text features rather than photo editing like many other online card printing services. The good news is that InvitationBox has lovely cards that need little adjustment for your occasion. If you want a photo card service that can help you craft that perfectly worded message, InvitationBox is worth your consideration.